Saturday, February 24, 2018

Traveling the World Through Music—Sans Passport

Concert Review by Bryce Christensen

Might the Orchestra of Southern
Utah might be accused of false advertising in its announcement that its concert
on the Theme “World Wonders” would take place in Cedar City’s Heritage Center
on February 22nd, 2018? Perhaps. For the hundreds who gathered for this
marvelous concert soon found themselves not in Southern Utah but rather in
Australia’s Barrier Reef waters, in Egypt, in India, in China, in Brazil, and
in England. And they found themselves visiting these far-away places in
long-ago eras. How did listeners leave 21st-century Utah behind and reach such
distant and exotic regions and times? Music critic Craig Wright partly explains
this marvel when commenting on what can happen to those who listen to great
classical music: “The power of . . . this music will transport you. You will
hear new patterns and combinations that will transport you to far-off places.”
As those who gathered at the Heritage Center experienced the power of new
musical patterns and combinations to transport them, the concert hall that they
had supposed was their destination as they drove to 105 North 100 East in Cedar
City became instead a port of departure for exciting and wonderful far-off
places. The rest of the explanation for the unexpected spatiotemporal migration
of the concert came in the welcoming words of OSU President Harold Shirley, who
explained to the gathered audience that the evening’s music would convey
listeners not only to distant places but also to long-ago times, taking them to
ancient Egypt, imperial Rome, and medieval Europe. Who knew that the Heritage
Center could double as both an airport terminal and a time machine?

And the travels in space
and time began with the evening’s very first number: Douglas Wagner’s Ancient Echoes of Time, a number so
richly suggestive of the grandeur and majesty of Imperial Rome that the images
of the Colosseum projected onto screens on either side of the stage provided
the perfect visual complement. As the presiding artistic force for the
evening’s astounding forays, conductor Carylee Zwang evinced impressive
confidence and poise from the evening’s first notes, as she drew from the
orchestra perfectly modulated and nuanced renditions of music evoking a diverse
range of places and eras.

Via the superb
musicianship of both the conductor and the orchestra, the members of audience
next found themselves not in ancient Rome but rather in 17th-century India, as
imposing images of the Taj Mahal took the eyes to the same place and time conjured
by the measures of Rimsky-Korsakov’s Song of India, measures sublimely mysterious
and enigmatic.

Proving yet again that a
conductor commands as much magic as any wizard, Zwang relocated the entire
concert hall from pre-modern India to ancient China with just one wave of her
baton as the orchestra next devoted its collective musical artistry to
Jiangning Fu’s Floating Clouds and
Flowing Water, a number originally premiered in China by OSU’s Music
Director Xun Sun. A composition beguilingly fusing interludes of pastoral
tranquility with passages alive with a spritely frolicsomeness, this music
conveyed something of the Taoist Ying and Yang of the Middle Kingdom, long
protected by the Great Wall, which appeared in images projected on the Concert
Hall screens. Playing noteworthy solos in this laudably rendered number were
Kendra Leavitt on the harp, Virginia Stitt on the English horn, and Heather
Wilhelm on the violin.

Zwang and the orchestra
left the stage for next two numbers, but the theme of musical travel through
space and time persisted. Playing the first of these numbers, the Southern Utah
String Quartet rendered a John Reed arrangement of an anonymous 16th-century
British melody that casts the melodic strains of “Scarborough Fair” into
Canticle style. Hauntingly plangent, this number echoed in the heart like an
elegiac chant lamenting an age now forever lost, an age well symbolized by the
images of Stonehenge projected during this selection. The members of the
Quartet—violinists Lindsay Szczesny and Suzanne Stewart and cellist Leah Brown
and violist Sara Penny—well deserved the appreciative applause from an audience
genuinely moved by their imaginative visit to early England.

The Red Rock Singers
replaced the Southern Utah String Quartet as the guest ensemble next
transporting listeners to realms surprisingly distant from 21st-century Cedar
City. Under the direction of Steve Meredith and accompanied by Lydia Feild and
Tracey Bradshaw, the Singers relocated the audience into the medieval world of
Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana, a cantata
based on medieval European poetry celebrating themes such as the fickleness of
Fortune, the joys of Spring, and the pleasures of dancing with a beloved. From
opening notes that strain against all earthly restraint, then seguing into
measures of tense and impulsive movement, this number overflows with energy that
has been choreographed into apt dances. Indeed, this performance of an exciting
excerpt of the vocal element of the cantata served in part as an invitation to
the audience to see the full dance-and-song version at Southern Utah University’s
Randall Theater, running February 28th through March 5th.

After the intermission,
with the orchestra back on the stage and Zwang back on the podium, wonderful
symphonic music once again carried listeners about the earth and through the
epochs. With the propulsive energy of Villa-Lobos’ Jumping Bean, the audience caught a harmonic ride to South America,
while they contemplated projected images of the towering statue of Christ the
Redeemer rising above a modern Rio de Janeiro, contrasted with the image of the
ruins of Machu Picchu preserving a trace of ancient grandeur. Reaching South
America means opening breathtakingly broad vistas.

In the orchestra’s
penultimate number, listeners left land behind and travelled over the sea,
projected images of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef providing the visual
counterpart to the variegated textures of the third movement of Debussy’s La Mer, a movement brimming with oceanic
dynamism, now pacific and serene, now ominous and threatening. Tense from its
opening notes, this movement concludes with a fierce squall, dissolving all
resistance.

The evening’s final
composition, Schwartz’s Prince of Egypt
carried listeners to ancient Egypt, beholding the massive pyramids projected on
the screens but also thrilling to the hope that inspired the Israelites let out
of bondage by the prophet Moses. Conveying the passions, the heartache,
ultimately the faith of this beleaguered people and their heroic prophet, the
orchestra brought listeners right to the very edge of a Promised Land, glimpsed
as a visionary possibility. With praiseworthy solos coming from violinist
Heather Wilhelm, flautist Tanisa Crosby, French hornist Pete Atkins, bassoonist
Julie Kluber, and clarinetist Sarah Solberg, the orchestra’s splendid
performance of this popular composition no doubt had more than a few listeners
quite certain that, yes, “There can be miracles when you believe.”

Zwang and the
instrumentalists under her direction all deserve praise for their achievement
in a concert that truly defied the constraints of both geography and chronology.
The orchestra once again evinced musicianship of the first order. Steve Swift
and Sam Shakespeare also merit favorable mention for the projected visual
images which added colorful splendor to accompany the superlative music.

In adding poetry
readings interspersed throughout evening’s concert, OSU erased a boundary
separating musical from literary art. On an evening when music was smashing
geographic and temporal limits, listeners may not have marveled that the
boundary between literature and music also fell. To be sure, this experiment
may need some refining before repeating. But the imaginative promise of fusing
poetry with music did emerge clearly when the spare, dark verse of The Exeter
Book ‘s “The Ruin” fittingly introduced the String Quartet’s pungent melancholy
and again when Keats’ potent marine imagery from “On the Sea” provided an
organic segue into Debussy’s sea-themed composition.

In all of its modes and
operations, the evening’s globe-straddling, millennia-transgressing musical
expedition left listeners with new appreciation for far-flung corners of the
world and oft-forgotten episodes in history. Those listeners also gained a new
awareness of the good fortune of living at a time and in a place where
artistically minded sponsors such as the Charles and Gloria Maxfield Parrish
Foundation and the Rocky Mountain Power Foundation donate generously to make
concerts such as this one possible. Most of all, however, this time-and-space
defying concert left listeners newly grateful that 21st-century Cedar City
place enjoys the benefits of a regional orchestra sufficiently talented and
imaginative to give music lovers an unforgettable melodic journey to very
distant places and times.

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The Orchestra of Southern Utah performs a variety of programs and recitals throughout the year. We are a semi-professional group with artists from many different backgrounds and age groups. We love bringing quality music to Southern Utah and appreciate our amazing supporters.